McKechnie, Shirley (1926-)

Biographies

Shirley McKechnie was born Shirley Gorham
in Melbourne, and received her early
schooling at Albion State School, and
Williamstown High School. Although educated
for a career in science McKechnie's training
in movement and dance began at the age
of four and she also took lessons in
ballet with Jennie Brenan from the age
of ten.

After matriculating, McKechnie worked
in the research laboratories of the Melbourne
and Metropolitan Board of Works while
taking dance and composition classes
at the Studio of Creative Dance, Melbourne,
with Daisy Pirnitzer and Hanny Kolm (Exiner),
both teachers being exponents of the
modern European dance tradition brought
to Australia by Gertrud Bodenwieser in
1939. She also danced with the performance
group attached to the Studio of Creative
Dance. In 1945 McKechnie began teaching
dance at a small school she established
with the encouragement and support of
the Ferntree Gully Arts Society. She
continued to teach at this school until
her marriage to Ken McKechnie in 1948.
After the birth of her second child,
she established a second school in Beaumaris,
Melbourne, in 1955. This school became
the foundation for her long career as
a teacher, choreographer and dance director.

In 1963 McKechnie founded the Australian
Contemporary Dance Theatre, whose dancers
were drawn from the older students of
her school. McKechnie was the company's
director and main choreographer between
1963 and 1973. During this time she choreographed
a number of works for the company including
Sketches on Themes of Paul Klee
(1964),
Earth Song (1965),
Vision of Bones (1966),
Sea Interludes (1966),
Hymn of Jesus (1967),
Of Spiralling Why (1967),
The Other Generation(1968),
Landscape of Dream and Memory
(1970),
The Finding of the Moon
(1972), and
Canon for Four Dancers (1973).
During this period she also wrote and
choreographed a lecture and performance
titled The Dancer, the Dance and the
Audience.

After graduating from Monash University
with an honours degree in English literature
in 1974 McKechnie founded and directed
the first degree course in dance studies
at an Australian tertiary institution
at Rusden College, now Deakin University,
in 1975. In her role as dance educator
and advocate for the dance she was also
a co-founder of the Australian Association
for Dance Education (AADE), now Ausdance,
founding chair of the Tertiary Dance
Council of Australia, founder of the
Green Mill Dance Project, and a member
of the research team for Conceiving Connections,
a three year-study (2002-2004) building
on the research project Unspoken Knowledges.
Conceiving Connections aimed to ?increase
our understanding of dance audiences
by addressing problems that have been
identified by the dance industry as critical
to its viability among the contemporary
performing arts in Australia'.

McKechnie is currently a professorial
fellow at the Victorian College of the
Arts. She has received numerous awards
in recognition of her services to dance
in Australia. They include an Order of
Australia in 1987, a Kenneth Myer Medallion
for the Performing Arts in 1993, the
Ausdance 21 Award for outstanding and
distinguished service, and two Australian
Dance Awards, including that for lifetime
achievement in 2001. In 1998 she was
elected an honorary fellow of the Australian
Academy of the Humanities.

... . who passed away Jovember 12. 1926. — Always renembered by his wife, daughter lilda. and family ... the engagement of their only daughter, Shirley, to Dean, youngest son of Mr. and Mrs. G. A. Heinicke ...
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